trading halt, page-58

Freehold,

"A duster until otherwise advised"... You've just described every well drilled in history. Talk about having a bet each way!

But point you seem to be having difficulty grasping is that they can have gas shows (in fact they almost certainly have had gas shows) and the well can still be a duster.

You are right though about the helium. Helium at Magee does not automatically mean helium at Mt Kitty, and a standard mud logging unit does not even measure helium, so even the rig wouldn't know if the gas shows they're seeing contain helium unless they are using a very specialised mud logging unit. Which Santos may have requested for this well, but I suspect they haven't, because they don't really care whether they detect helium in mud gas or not, they will wait to get gas samples from a flow test and then send them away for chromatography.

It's worth pointing out that it's not unusual to get helium in these deep, very old rocks in the Amadeus. Ooraminna had elevated helium too, at 0.22%. Which sounds low but is in fact very decent for helium.

But 6% is very, very high helium and I certainly wouldn't be banking that number for Mt Kitty just yet.